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Thou Shalt Not Revenge Others

Issues: … revenge … deliberate evil … ethical responsibility … being revenged … dealing with revenge … dealing with deliberate evil …

We use Biblical language here because a Moses law is ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’

The Ten Commandments were an early attempt by humanity to codify laws that all members of a society would follow through the generations.

But we are in modern times. Yes, and so what? some might ask.

• Have you ever been revenged or taken revenge against another?

Not, have you wanted to, have you had dark fantasies, but did you actually use what powers you had to deliberately hurt another human being because you felt they had hurt you?

Is this question specific enough? Of course we may all have revenge fantasies at some time in our lives, as well as other kinds of dark fantasies.

However, where revenging another become an anti moral act is carrying out your revenge fantasies, especially unconsciously.

Do not revenge another, is my consciously made statement for all to read and think about, whether they adapt such a principle and practice to live or not.

My Ex Revenges Me

Besides the extreme rage because I did not want to relate longer to her I had to endure bodily threats from a mentally unbalanced friend of hers who threatened directly to throw me down the stairs.

She also said around the same time that she was trying to make me afraid with threats and other negativities.

I was certainly under stress, so much so I was trembling at times and could not get certain threats and dangers out of my mind.

Why does a divorce have to be so horrible?

Another principle to live by. If a person does not want to relate to you, then let them go with acceptance, if not grace. Do not revenge them, attack them, try to do them in. Why? because you can affect them mentally for life, creating fears and other symptoms that no one should have to bear.

Why? Because it demeans you and infects you with darkness to take revenge on someone else who has shared a lot of love with you, as you have with him-her. You infect yourself with a terrible evil by deliberately doing evil.

Every person has the right to relate sexually and emotionally to whomever they choose to relate to. Everyone has sexual rights to fulfill themselves sexually.

Just because someone else no longer wants to relate to you, for whatever reason, does not give you the right to deliberately hurt that person as best you can.

You don’t have to become friends but don’t make an enemy of someone who has shared love with you and opened him or herself to receiving your love however you could and chose to give it.

You, I, have no right to take revenge on another person, to deliberately cause them harm as best you can because you feel hurt by them.

You are feeling hurt, your suffering, is your own responsibility. Someone says No to you, then it is your responsibility to handle that reality yourself. Instead of revenging someone, seek healing help elsewhere to handle your own suffering and make yourself stronger and objective.

See reality as it is. Don’t judge it. What right have you to revenge another, to punish another because they no longer do what you want?

This is the arrogance of the ego with an attitude that if someone hurts me I have the right to hurt them back even worse than they hurt me. This is an evil ego deliberately trying to destroy someone because they do not do what your ego wants.

Yes, certain kinds of people use their capacity to cause fear and anxiety in another to bind them into relationship.

It is crazy. It is unethical. It is just plain wrong. What you do to another is what you also do to yourself, making your own internal core dark, destructive and crazy.

I say as a psychologist and ethicist, don’t revenge others just because you feel hurt and a loss. Handle your own suffering.

But I don’t say that you have to do what I am strongly advocating. I am not in a role of power with you in which I can structure your behavior when you are obviously doing wrong to others and yourself.

In my career as an active psychologist I have had committed temporarily to the psychiatric ward clients who were seriously threatening suicide. The law gave me this right and responsibility.

Now, the only power I have left in this life is to point out the issues and offer some choices and solutions.

Recently another person I have been in a friendly business relationship with also revenged me terribly, causing me considerable stress. I don’t go into this incident here because this is not a rant but an ethical and psychological exploration. The situation is still going on and not resolved. I am learning new things about revengeful people and my own vulnerability.

I can say this. I strongly suspect I am being treated as a Jew, even though only my father was Jewish. There are a number of parallel behaviors in how Jews were treated during the holocaust period, and still going on today.

Jews don’t usually revenge others. Through the many dark ages non-Jews have often attacked Jews and revenged them for suffering they received elsewhere than from Jews.

This is an archetypal level of why Jews are attacked so much, even today.

The Healing Solutions Possible

1. One, recognize that we all have revenge fantasies, or wanting to get back at perceived adversaries, as a way of trying to alleviate our own suffering.
2. Two, don’t act out your revenge fantasies. Create with them. Write about them to yourself. Tell a friend who can listen objectively. Acknowledge that you are hurting badly. Own your own tendency to evil.
3. Three, let go of anyone who does not want to relate to you as soon as possible. Accept your losses, as well as remember the good things you had together.
4. Four, don’t try and reconcile if they are compulsively into revenging you. Being nice or vulnerable to your adversary can encourage more attacks, not less.
5. Five, take as strong a stand as possible against being revenged by this person. Set whatever limits you can. Don’t be ambivalent. Don’t play nice, yet not give the person what they think they want with you. Set your limits in whatever ways you can.
6. Six, let the past go. It is the present you are in and are ending the relationship decisively in and this you stick to.

One time I was in the early stages of a relationship with a psychotherapist. But I was still exploring relating to others to find the right one for me. When I ‘explored’ with another, I told this lover of mine.

She said, if you continue to relate to this person it is over between us. I said, okay, good idea. This night it is over between us. Then she tried to seduce me. No, I said. It’s over!

My point was that if this other person saw relationship as using power to try and keep you relating to her, then this was a relationship strategy that would fail, and fail with me also.

For it seems true that those who see getting and keeping a relationship by using power to evoke fear of rejection are the kind who maybe often will try and revenge a lover no longer wanting to relate to them.

Revenging

Revenging someone else is deliberately using the power you think you have over them to cause them to be in fear and terror at losing you, or being on your own.

Come to think of it, one of the people who did revenge me deliberately and terribly did also make a lot of threats. This person’s goal was to get me to yield and reconcile with her again. But I saw through the ruse and refused to relate to her or anyone on a negative and power-play basis.

When she saw her terror strategy was not working to get me to give in to her she said, ‘well, I tried.’

My God! I advocate instead in life that it goes better for us all to accept reality as it comes our way, rather than try and change the situation with power games and manipulations.

But it’s a hard story to teach, and to learn. I had a masterful teacher once, Dr Elizabeth Howes, who challenged me severely over my egocentricity’s. For her theory was not just theory. You had to live the process to truly learn it.

Many quit the training program I stayed in for ten years. Others who stayed years longer than I finally rebelled and trashed her, as I learned directly from her lips in several conversations.

Evil

One of these rebellious leaders told me when I asked him why he did not reconcile with our greatest teacher that had helped change our lives, he said, because she needs to feel the effects of her evil on the rest of us.

This man who revenged his greatest life teacher was quite a coward. Say I. He only went and reconciled with Dr Howes when she suffered a relapse and had to go to the hospital for her dying process.

He reported to us, whether true or not, that Elizabeth Howes said, ‘I have the deep feeling I have done something terribly wrong but I can’t remember what it is.”

Thanks a lot then, Dr John Petroni, if I am accurate as to what you said Dr Howes said. You waited too late to begin the reconciliation process with yours and my greatest life teacher. I had already reconciled with her two and four years earlier, and was so happy I did. We had several hours together, and what a great time it was for both of us, except for one revengeful minister that came for a visit at the same time.

I can’t believe still how so many people lack respect and are always out to feed their own egos first.

I end with an interesting incident.

One Thanksgiving, a big feast day in America, me and my students prepared a community feast. A psychologist I knew slightly was invited. I had conceived that we would all wait for everyone to arrive and all sit down at the same time.

Not this psychologist!

As soon as she came in she settled down at the table with food on it. She served herself. She started eating.

I thought, amazing, this goes against good manners, but then again it is the opposite of American good manners where you respect and serve others first, and then you meet your own needs.

What I knew of this psychologist’s professional life as the head of a hypnosis institute was that she was a strong leader doing good practical work. I really don’t think she was a revengeful person. She didn’t need to be!

This psychologist had adopted the behavior protocol that she took care of her own needs as she felt to do so, and did not base her behavior on what others might think of her.

I think she was not a revengeful person because since she was always meeting her own needs as best she could, how could she be hurt and deprived by others?

The Revengeful Person

The revengeful person projects onto people more powerful than her or him that they are depriving the revengeful person, when in fact if you meet your own needs as best you can you certainly cannot blame anyone else for depriving you and thus set out to deliberately hurt them with your own self-generated evil.

Did we all get this point?

Sometimes I think I write more to the core than most blog entries by others that I have seen. I’m not popular with big numbers. Yet having 20 – 50 visitors a day is certainly fine for an author who writes seriously.

Summary

Don’t revenge others, even if you want to. Take back your enemy projections, blaming others for your own hurt and loss. Finally, learn to meet your own needs in conscious and cooperative ways. It will go better for you in life if you do.

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